Thinking About My Irish Ancestors On Saint Patrick's Day

Like many people in North America I have a lot of Irish ancestors. In fact if asked what my heritage is I would probably say Irish. But how much do I really know about Ireland or what it means to be Irish. Sure I have reached my ancestors names but I know little about Irish history or Irish life in the past. We all know a little about the potato famine and the coffin ships but beyond that most of us don't know much . So in honor of Saint Patrick's Day and all my Irish ancestors I am going to spend this afternoon reading about the history and culture of Ireland. I may even have a Guinness. 

Railway workers reburied with dignity 180 years later

The remains of five Irish labourers, who researchers believe were murdered in 1832 while building a Pennsylvania railroad, received a dignified reinterment Friday more than 5,000 kilometres from their homeland and nearly two centuries after their first anonymous burials.



http://www.thespec.com/news/world/article/684908--railway-workers-reburied-with-dignity-180-years-later

Irish Famine Migration to New Brunswick, 1845-1852

I spoted this on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog Weekly Featured Database. In the Wake of Dark Passage: Irish Famine Migration to New Brunswick, 1845-1852 is a fantastic new database that is worth a look.

* Saint John Almshouse Records
* Brenan Funeral Home Records: Traces of Ireland
* Fitzwilliam Estate Emigration Books 1847-1856
* RS555 Provincial Secretary: Immigration Administration Records
* Immigrant Letters
* Newspapers
* Passenger Lists
* Teachers Petition Database
* Irish Immigrants in the New Brunswick Census of 1851 and 1861

Mass Grave For 19th-century Irish Immigrants

Researchers may have discovered a mass grave for nearly five dozen 19th-century Irish immigrants who died of cholera weeks after traveling to Pennsylvania to build a railroad. Historians at Immaculata University have known for years about the 57 immigrants who died in August 1832 but could not find the grave.
Read More

Irish & German Immigrant Skeletons found on Staten Island

Last summer a team of archaeologists dug up skeletal bones from beneath the asphalt of a municipal parking lot in St. George, Staten Island

The bones are believed to be the remains of more than 50 19th-century European immigrants, among them victims of the Irish potato famine. There are about 10 intact adult skeletons, most of them men in their 20s and 30s. There are smaller skeletons too, but none complete as children’s bones do not survive the acidic soil.

Archaeologists have concluded that the site was a mass grave for patients quarantined at the nearby Marine Hospital. Patients died of typhus, yellow fever and other infectious diseases in the mid-1800s

More than 150 years ago the Marine Hospital was where patients were taken, and where they died in such numbers that they had to be buried in trenches, sometimes three or four bodies deep. Those were peak famine years, and most immigrants who passed through were Irish families escaping hunger and destitution and Germans fleeing political turmoil in their homeland. In 1858, the hospital burned to the ground.

Read Honoring The Bones, the story about the controversy over what should be done with these remains of Irish and other immigrants

Search for ships passenger lists carrying Irish Immigrants to America during the Famine Years. Search for German immigrants to America